III-22 Surface (IV)

Team and armies have a breaking point, just like individual Pathbearers. That breaking point is variable. It depends on a hell of a lot of t

Team and armies have a breaking point, just like individual Pathbearers. That breaking point is variable. It depends on a hell of a lot of things, such as how long a group has known each other, how dire the situation is, if any of them are already dead, and what not. 

See, a good team of Pathbearers can keep itself standing, can keep themselves fighting, even as things look hopeless, just for the men, women, and bots next to them.

Some group compositions can even claim to be unbreakable, but that's not a guarantee all the time, and that's not even a guarantee for that specific group when the right pressures are applied. See, with the right kind of damage inflicted, everyone collapses. Everyone. No one is immune to harm. No one is beyond the touch of trauma. 

And there’s even a specific term for this thing.

Usually, armies collapse before their greatest Masters and Heroes do. This is called the “Adept Collapse Point,” mainly because most of a force is made up of Adepts. When they go down, when the core of your army gives, the rest will fall after. It doesn't matter if the Master wants to keep fighting; he's just one guy. He can do quite a bit of damage, but eventually, with the right approach, they’ll be brought down.

It doesn't matter if a Hero wants to keep warring. A Hero is a dangerous threat—one that can deal a lot of damage and kill thousands of people. But if you got a good group of Masters with varied skills, you can kill a Hero like a pack of wolves can kill a bear.

Understand that you have to take care of your people. After a certain limit, they're not going to be combat capable. And after a certain amount of trauma, if they start thinking about just going home, just stopping the fight, pull them out of there. They are more of a liability than an asset by that point. People, like equipment, need maintenance. Everyone's maintenance level is different. But it's there.

Ignore this truth at your peril. You might still want to keep brawling, if your guys are done, take them home, if you can.

War is not something you half-ass.

-Memoirs of a Master-Tier War Mage

III-22
Surface (IV)

Shiv accelerated down the dragon's throat with his new hostage in tow before the beast could close its jaws. The glistening inner flesh of the dragon proved to be a surprising lubricant. In less than a half-second, he found himself along with every spike from his gravitic field. The space grew cramped, things got dark, and Shiv ripped through the dragon’s esophagus.

Just then, a trembling sensation pulsed out from the dragon. It flared with golden mana, and Shiv felt its Chronomancy start to shift. 

It’s jumping back in time, he realized. Fine. Two can play at that. Shiv spiked himself at an angle. He pushed through squirming organs and ruptured countless blood vessels as he slammed a boot into what he guessed was the dragon’s kidney. The beast let out a skull-shattering bellow of pain. Shiv anchored this moment in time, losing another of his expendable seconds. 

The dragon shifted across time thereafter. It vanished around him in a stream of traveling gold, and Shiv found himself hovering in the open air some three hundred meters away from the dragon with the rider still frozen in his grip. It reappeared where it was three seconds ago before he slammed into it. A flash of green slashed at him from the corner of his eyes. The other dragons were firing at him. His temporal shell was a second away from cracking.

Shiv snorted. His shell ignited with surging mana as he cast himself back inside the dragon, back to the point where he was stomping on the dragon’s kidney. The beast howled with renewed pain. Shiv’s temporal shell cracked apart.

Then, he lost a patch of time. But rather, it was more like a patch of time happened to him all at once. The dragon thrashed, the dragon tried to move, the dragon roared in pain—and then its Chronomancy broke apart as well. In the end, Shiv found himself still inside the writhing dragon. Rather than jumping back in time again, the beast had been incapacitated by pain. 

And beside Shiv was a struggling, thrashing rider, who was utterly confused and utterly terrified about his current predicament.

Squirming tendons pressed against Shiv, and blood spilled over him. The bitter copper taste of the dragon's insides seeped into Shiv's armor and painted him with a foul-smelling stench. The rider wasn't doing much better. He was absolutely lost about where they were, kicking and struggling, slamming elbows and knees against the dragon’s massive organs. Shiv tightened his grip on the rider, and the latter went still. 

With a flex from his gravitic field, Shiv tore the rider’s armor asunder, splitting it down the middle and exposing bare flesh. The rider let out a ragged cry and struggled to break free. A gleaming piece of metal appeared in the rider’s hand, but Shiv broke the fool’s arm and took the knife from the rider.

The rider’s agonized shriek reverberated in the dragon’s depths.

With the rider incapacitated and stripped of Magical Resistance, Shiv shifted his attention back to the stunned dragon. Time to fashion you into a suit of proper meat armor.

A Woundeater manifested upon the Deathless’s right hand, and its insides gleamed with crystallized lacerations. Shiv drove the spell into the dragon, and mana explosions rocked the beast from the inside. It took seven spells to finally shatter the dragon’s Magical Resistance, and as he did, Shiv immediately began reshaping the beast’s body.

It had an adamantine barding serving as chest armor, so opening a gap along its torso wouldn’t work. However, its arms were still bare of metal and guarded only by its natural golden scales. Shiv exploited that fact as he liquefied the dragon’s left arm all the way up to the shoulder and pushed out all the blood and viscera plugging the gap. He then wiggled his way between the dragon’s ribs and repositioned himself right in front of his new viewing port.

Dragon blood was flooding his armor and stinging his eyes. Both dragon and rider were caught in the throes of pain and suffering, unable to respond. Shiv positioned his head right where the dragon’s left shoulder used to be and peeked outside. The world was spinning around and around as the dragon plunged from the skies. But then it stopped as something caught it. Shiv saw a set of massive golden claws holding onto the dragon by the tail.

And that made him grin.

The enemy was confused again. They were trying to save their friend. And now they were close. Shiv focused his Biomancy and sensed four other dragons enter the vicinity of his mana field. Four riders came with them. That made a good chunk of the entire group. He killed a dragon and its rider earlier. He had this one down now. That left seven. And if he could handle those four, he would only be fighting three.

Should have been ten originally and nine still alive now. I counted nine Necromantic streams. Gotta do this fast and strategically. Take them by surprise.

“He—he’s got me…” the rider whimpered. “We’re… we’re inside my dragon. He’s…”

“Who are you talking to there, buddy?” Shiv growled.

The poor rider promptly shit himself. Shiv wondered if that ever happened before—a rider getting kidnapped by someone else and then pulled inside their own mount before fouling their pants there.

Probably not, Shiv thought, proud of his achievement in a twisted way. I deserve a reward for this, system. This might just be the most unique act of intimidation I’ve ever performed.

The Challenger is roaring with laughter.

The Challenger is proud of you.

Shiv winced. That was the opposite of the reward. That filled Shiv with shame. Yeah… Maybe all this shit’s making me a bit too sadis—The hells, was just a pulse of felling Psychomancy mana leaving his mind.

The translucent mana was so faint and sudden that he missed it, but when another ripple spread out from the rider’s mind, Shiv gritted his teeth.

Awareness 13 > 14

That was a pulse of Psychomancy. And the rider was communicating with someone. Shiv’s first thoughts were to knock the rider out or kill them if he had to, but he stopped himself. A thought came to him—one that might just allow him to affect all the other dragons and their riders at once.

Shiv directed his own Psychomancy into the mind of the rider, and he tasted the rider’s pain and terror. More importantly, Shiv felt how the rider was broadcasting wavelengths of Psychomancy across the world. Shiv wasn’t sure what kind of skill evolution this was, but it seemed to be focused on range and telecommunications. The rider’s mana was supple and soft—practically like gas compared to Uva’s solid threads, but it traveled far and fast, and as it came crashing back, Shiv received fragments of memory and flashes of insight from other minds.

From the dragon this rider once controlled. From the other riders.

And the opportunities for havoc just keep coming. Inspiration struck Shiv. He had more than one angle to hit the other riders now. Maybe all at the same time. The rider’s Psychomancy turned against Shiv. The poor bastard was trying to push him out. And the rider would have been able to do it too if Shiv didn’t snap the rider’s other arm by the elbow. Pain consumed the rider thereafter, and while he was busy wailing in pain, Shiv pushed deeper into his mind and prepared to do something unpleasant.

If the rider thought a few broken bones was bad, he was going to hate just how brutal things were about to get.

Shiv activated his Icon of the Paindrinker and immediately started tearing himself apart. He bound his mind tighter to the rider’s, and while Shiv grunted in discomfort as his blood mingled with the dragon’s, the rider’s cries reached a fever pitch. Shiv telepathically urged the rider to focus, to push through some of the pain to contact his comrades.

“Only they can save you now,” Shiv told the rider. “Call out to them. Let them know what’s happening. Carry the hurt across for me.”

And trapped in the depths of his own anguish, the rider didn’t realize what Shiv was trying to do. So he cast out to his fellow riders, his Psychomantic broadcast lined not only with a plea for help, but an escalating flood of new and exotic suffering born of Shiv’s mind-linked self-mutilation…

***

“Gold-10! Gold-10! Respond!” Gold-01 watched as Gold-10’s dragon fell. It was tumbling tail over head, turning over and over as it failed to regain its bearings. The dragon was wailing, clawing at its own torso while its head whipped about in pain. 

Gold-01 struggled to contain their own horror. He had never seen a dragon react like that. He’d seen them die in battle. Seen them get ripped apart by other dragons in mana storms, or reduced to bloody paste by Master Dynamancers. But to make a dragon make these kinds of tortuous noises…

Gold-01 focused. He tried to get his Divination Matrix to zero in on the target. Three seconds ago, the target briefly reappeared as Gold-10’s dragon jumped back in time. But then the target Chrono-Jumped too, and now all Gold-01 had was a pulsing imprint of where the target used to be. In the interim, Gold-07, 08, 02, and 09 all moved in to assist Gold-10.

“Keep her still!” Gold-02 called out to the others. “Gold-07. Biomancy. Now. It’s missing an arm.”

The other riders commanded their own dragons to hold 10’s dragon in place, to keep it from falling further so they could figure out what exactly was going on. But as they worked to save the dragon, a telepathic cry crashed over them. The pulse of mana was accompanied by a nightmarish howl—a howl made by Gold-10.

“Fuck!” Gold-09 flinched. “You guys hearing this?”

“Yeah…” Gold-02 breathed. A building dread flooded the group’s shared Psychomancy field.

But then came something else. As Gold-10’s message fully sank into them, it came with an explosion of agony, of pain unlike anything any of them had ever known.

Gold-10’s screams proved contagious. His cries continued as the others in his squadron let out hisses and groans at first, before barking out shouts of pain. Then, a scream erupted from Gold-08. And things all fell apart from there.

Gold-01’s eyes rolled as he felt himself getting torn apart from the inside. At the same time, he learned what it was like for someone to peel the flesh off his back and detach every last one of his muscles from his bones. This pain was on another level. Words failed to capture the immense torture that consumed them. And it just kept building with each passing wave.

And with the squadron’s riders drowning in trauma, their dragons reacted with confusion and agitation. They flared their shells and skipped back in time, trying to avoid threats. They slowed time and searched for the unseen foe that was hurting their masters. The only good thing was how they went unaffected by Gold-10’s Psychomantic broadcast.

Human pain wasn’t the same as dragon pain. 

Gold-01 did everything he could to push through the hurt and refocus. If he could reach 10, to stop this at the source—

Then, another presence brushed his mind. Gold-01 shuddered. The new mind that pressed against him was human. Or so 01 thought. Yet, there was something off about its nature, off about its shape. Visions flashed through 01’s eyes. Memories cast by the strange mind into 10 before it was filtered over to the rest of the group.

In scenes that resembled feverish dreams, 01 saw himself staring down at Gold-10 in a dark place. In a place of blood and fragmented bone and shifting tendons. Light spilled in through a narrow gap, and it showed just how badly injured Gold-10 was. Both of Gold-10’s arms were broken, and he was screaming—screaming as he broadcast telepathic messages to the rest of the group, begging them to come save him. But his mind was also being filled with external sources of pain. By traumatic memories that didn’t belong to him.

And through the mist of pain and near-madness, 01’s perception skipped, and he found himself staring through Gold 10’s gaze. For the first time, 01 laid eyes on his enemy. He saw a pair of bright, white irises glaring back at him. Bright, white irises gleam amidst pools of shadow and blood. The enemy Pathbearer wore a skull-shaped helmet, and 01 couldn’t understand why someone else wearing the vestiges of death would be standing against Sullain.

Then, the adversary spoke for the first time. “Get ready, riders. Because it’s my turn to be the monster. And your turn to be the prey.”

Ice-cold horror flooded Gold-01’s blood. His senses reeled back, and as he found himself inside his own capsule again, his racing mind realized a terrifying truth.

The enemy was hiding inside Gold-10’s dragon. And he had Gold-10 with him.

“Gold—” Gold-01 bit back a scream. “Gold-Primary! Pull back! Everyone pull—”

But it was too late. Far too late. A tremor of mana resonance passed through Gold-01’s dragon as a shroud of gold ignited inside Gold-10’s dragon. Gold-01’s dragon reacted, forming its own temporal shell, but without 01 directing specific commands, it rushed in for the kill, moving on bestial instinct rather than a rider’s intellect. And through the windows of his capsule, 01 could see the other dragons in his squadron reacting the same way.

They were closing in on the enemy—on an enemy that could physically tear a dragon apart.

“No—no!” Gold-01 cried, trying to fight through the building tidal waves of pain. “Stop!” He cast his thoughts at his own dragon. “STOP!” That telepathic message went across. His dragon halted. The other dragons in his squadron didn’t. They just kept closing on where 10 was. Where the Heroic-Tier enemy was.

Then—and for no obvious reason at all—Gold-10’s dragon slammed torso-first into against Gold-08.

And that was when the slaughter started

***

Skill Gained: Deception 1 (Common)

Psychomancy 12 > 13

Dread Aura 89 > 91

Shiv triggered his Song of the Vigilant to focus through the pain. He ripped his Psychomancy out from the rider—Callsign Gold-10. Real name Dignity Huevero. Shiv groaned as he tried to shake off the memory spillover. Uva warned him about stuff like this. It made him feel like he was himself and not at the same time. Good thing I got to practice believing I was a potato for a while earlier. Re-focusing my mind might have been a bit harder otherwise.

A Woundeater snaked across his body and consumed all his current injuries. At once, the bulk of Shiv’s pain faded, but Gold-10 kept screaming as the Paindrinker continued affecting him. Shiv stopped time. Gold-10’s screeching went silent. Pressing himself against the open chasm of mangled flesh he made of the dragon’s left arm, Shiv stared out from his personal “stabbing port” and tracked where the other enemies were with his Biomancy. Two more dragons got within two hundred meters of him. That left just one dragon outside that distance.

Good. I can work with that.

Shiv stopped time. As soon as his temporal shell fused over his body, the dragons triggered their Chronomancy as well. He felt their Strider of the Unbending Path Skills activate in tandem with his. A shuddering vibration passed through Shiv’s time-armor. 10 seconds—no, 9. I still have an anchor back at the Surface Gateway. Let’s see how many dragons and riders I can kill in 9 seconds.

He seized the dragon he was in and spiked it into its nearest counterpart. A massive collision shook the dragon’s insides, and Shiv let out a shout of exertion as he worked to get his stabbing port in-line with the dragon he was trying to stab. The body of another dragon came into sight. It was still twenty meters away from Shiv.

Twenty meters was nothing when you could change the size of your knife.

He pushed his upper body out from the wound and slashed. The Skysplitter’s Size-Shifting enchantment activated. It expanded from a thirty-five centimeter dagger to a hundred-meter long blade. It crashed against the other dragon’s neck. 

The beast’s scales shattered but held together. 

The softer tissues it was supposed to protect did not.

Shiv’s Deepest Edge carried the cut through veins, tendons, tissues, and more. Blood erupted from the dragon’s jaws. He cut it twice more for good measure. The bones in its neck parted then. The dragon’s head slumped over at an awkward angle as it fell from the sky, trailing blood from between its serried fangs.

Another dragon accelerated toward him. Shiv spiked his gravitic field twenty times. Gold-10 combusted and then turned to bloody mist beside him. Something inside Shiv cringed. Shit. Adept-Tier Toughness! Godsdammit, I wanted to keep him as a prisoner… Godsdammit.

Shiv twisted the dragon he was in to face the dragon that was coming at him—and cursed as a stream of Necromancy exploded just a few meters under him. The dragon Shiv was inside turned back inside and out. Its organs withered. Its scales darkened. A piece of its soul broke. Suddenly, its Chronomancy winked out and it went still. Shiv realized what happened in an instant. The thing that shattered inside it was a skill—its strongest skill. Chronomancy was lost to this dragon. It would never be able to stop the pace of time again. 

A terrible feeling churned in Shiv’s gut as he extended his blade to two hundred meters and drove it into the chest of the dragon that unleashed the beam. The tip of the Skysplitter sang out as adamantine greeted adamantine. But where he failed to pierce the dragon’s barding, its insides punctured by his progressing stab. The golden-scaled behemoth reeled back, clutching its chest. But it didn’t die. Not until Shiv dragged his blade across its throat.

***

“GOLD-01! GOLD-01! MY DRAGON—MY DRAGON’S DEAD! I’M FALLING I’M FUCKING FALLING—”

“GOLD-8! NO!”

Screams exploded over and over in Gold-01’s mind as he watched the disaster unfold. A massive gleaming blade had materialized and had burst free from Gold-10’s dragon—had emerged from the wound where its left arm used to be. It cut out in an instant. Gold-02’s dragon fell. And now Gold-08 was going down too. An explosion of force deformed the insides of Gold-10’s dragon as it was unnaturally ripped out of position. The enemy Pathbearer was dragging it around from the inside.

Dynamancy, Gold-01 guessed.

An entire patch of the dragon came apart in spilling chucks of festering flesh. Gold-01’s heart screamed in pain. Gold-01 loved dragons. They were great and terrible creatures, and Gold-10’s dragon was as mortally wounded as any dragon could be. Its Magical Resistance had been broken at some point, and a subsequent beam of Necromancy carved deep into its soul. 

Gold-01 couldn’t feel Gold-10’s mind either. Gold-01 tried not to think about that. 

The squadron had been drawn out of position trying to save one of their own, and now they were paying the price. Two riders dead. Three dragons slain. They couldn’t afford these losses. Not with the siege of Blackedge still ongoing.

There will come a time, Henry. There will come a time when you must sever your arm to save your body. It will maim your heart forever. But you must do it. This is the darkest part of being a leader. This where Pathbearers are broken. Master Irene’s voice surfaced in his mind.

He hadn’t thought about her in years. He hadn’t thought about her since the Stygia Raid… Since he shot her down over the skies of Vulketh. He tried not to think about her. Gold-01 thought she was his wound, his severed limb.

He was wrong. This was the moment he cut off his arm and mauled his heart. This was the time he sacrificed one to save the others.

“Gold-10… I’m sorry…” Gold-01 said. He didn’t realize when he started crying, or if Gold-10 could hear him or if—

It didn’t matter. He cycled his Necro-Thrower and fired. He struck Gold-10’s dragon in the back. More corrosive foulness consumed the dragon’s golden scales. Gold-01 felt like he just tore out his own heart. “Gold-Primary. Break contact and fire on… break contact and fire on Gold-10!”

A flood of reluctance and trauma washed through Gold-01 from the other riders, but they listened. They were good riders. Good soldiers. They knew. They just refused to accept until he ordered it. They had fought together for years, starting as little more than wyvern riders. The dragons had been with them for a decade as well. Gold-Primary was a squadron of Master-Tier riders, and now, for the first time in years, they were going to need to train new riders to make up for their casualties.

The massive blade swaying back and forth through the air shrank until it vanished from sight. A half-second thereafter, a small shape exploded out from inside Gold-10’s dragon and slammed hard into Gold-06’s dragon. The 10’s dragon came apart in a blossom of viscera and decaying flesh—but the pieces promptly combusted and dissolved as the small shape accelerated even faster. It tore clean through the neck of Gold-06’s dragon—-beheading it before Gold-01 could react. 

Only then did Gold-01’s Divination Matrix respond. It highlighted the target. They glowed a deep violet and Gold-01 snarled as he tried to turn his Necro-Thrower on the target.

It’s him! Gold-01’s mind screamed. The enemy Hero—

He didn’t get to finish that thought, as everything around the enemy Hero blasted outward in a cataclysmic explosion. A wall of flame and force crashed into Gold-01 just as he fired his Necro-Thrower. His dragon was launched backward. One of its wings dislocated from the sheer whiplash. The beam cut skyward and struck nothing, and that was the last thing Gold-01 saw as another three waves of crushing force smashed into his dragon and drove him head-first into the ceiling of his capsule.

***

4 seconds ago…

Strider of the Unbending Path 123 > 124

Adamantine Adaption 156 > 157

Inertial Overdrive 106 > 107

It didn’t take long for the dragon to start rotting around Shiv. Necromancy was horrifying in the way that it made you less with each hit it inflicted. Gold tarnished and withered into withered blackness. Organs shriveled. Blood dissolved. Bones crumbled away to ash. In seconds, Shiv’s meat shield started decomposing around him, coming apart in body and spirit. He expected them to hold back a little longer since he was effectively using one of their own as a shield, but once again the other riders adapted.

And that was the biggest difference between these Pathbearers and the ones he fought before. They learned. Constantly. This entire exchange wasn’t a clash of force against force or strength on strength but choice against choice. Shiv had his speed and surprise going for him. They had numbers, Chronomancy, and Necromancy.

Necromancy that was about to punch through the flesh of this dragon and set Shiv off like a mana bomb at any point.

Guess we all have to make ugly choices at some point, Shiv thought. Now. Time for me to make mine.

He cast his Skysplitter in the distance again. He didn’t care where it went, so long as it was away from here. The glow of Necromancy faded, but the dragon was still falling apart around Shiv. Time for a new plan: Shove myself down another dragon’s throat after stunning them with my inertial detonation. Yeah, this is gonna hurt…

Shiv spiked his gravitic field fifty times. He started breaking apart like the dragon he hid within. The air around him exploded with fire and displaced kinetic energy, and he burst out from the dragon’s body in a rush of speed. Blood gushed out from his eyes and ears as he sailed through the air toward the densest concentration of dragons. Darkness and crimson danced around the corners of his vision. Shiv groaned as he fought hard not to black out.

Five dragons reacted to his sudden appearance. He could see the Necromancy crystals on their backs brightening. But that’s as far as they got. Shiv burst his inertial sheath. A solid wall of destruction surged out from in a rippling wave. The sheer amount of force released also folded Shiv in half at the point of his lower spike.

The Deathless let out a ragged cry of pain—and then reverted time to a second ago and repeated the same action. 

He detonated his sheath again. His body broke again. His temporal shell reached the breaking point. He cast himself back in time once more. Shiv shot forward and burst his sheath again. His Chronomancy broke, but before it came apart entirely, he activated his Outside Context Problem.

A rush of coldness passed through Shiv as he focused on his senses. Everything around him was on fire. His inertial detonation spread wider and wider, displacing clouds and dragging dragons along in its wake. Shiv himself barely looked human—felt more like a mangled bag of flesh containing shards of displaced bone. He was so badly injured that if his Song of the Vigilant wasn’t active, he wouldn’t have been able to finish the spell.

A Woundeater passed through him, swallowing injury after injury as his body snapped back into shape. Shiv let out a slight groan as he looked around. The time dragons had been ragdolled in different directions. Most of them seemed to have broken wings. A few weren’t responsive at all. It was a testament to just how tough they were that they didn’t die outright. Maybe the same couldn’t be said for the riders.

The warrior in Shiv called out to him, demanded that he keep pursuing them—that he finish off each and every one now that they were scattered and vulnerable. But he could hear Adam’s voice in the back of his head. Uva’s, too. The Necrotechs had responded fast, and if they could scramble one team of dragons, they could unleash another.

Time to vanish, Shiv decided, as he triggered his Skysplitter’s spatial anchor. He teleported to the blade in a blast of displaced space and promptly smashed through a verdant hill. Grass and dirt exploded over Shiv and he spiked his gravitic field up to right himself. As he sailed through the air, his helmet broke and Shiv cursed.

Time to replace this suit of armor. It’s done. The inertial detonations are hell on my Toughness, but damn if they aren’t powerful as all hell.

He triggered Chameleon and Silhouette as he kept flying low, and for a few moments, he waited for the dragon to catch sight of him again. But then, there came a gleam in the corner of his vision, and he saw what looked to be a particularly bright star in the distance. A bright star glowing just over the Tidewall.

A second past. The star got brighter. Shiv let out a breath. “Well. I guess I finally managed to lose the dragons. Time to keep—”

What Shiv thought to be a star then accelerated straight into his nose and exploded in his face. His body folded over. His flesh cooked. Shiv burned as he felt the concentrated power of a nascent sun consumed him. Before he could even react, two-hundred more solar-mana infused arrows speared down from the stratosphere and reduced Shiv to his component atoms.

Revenant 41 > 42

Shiv blinked as he respawned. But everything around him was burning. A column of blinding fire drilled clean through the land and swelled out, reaching the horizon. Everything burned. 

Everything. 

Everything faded into the blinding dawn of an exploding sun.

The Deathless’s mind remained blank for a moment, before the cold got to him. He needed to drain vitality, he needed to—

What the fuck was that? What the hells just killed me.

***

1 second ago…

Roland Arrow’s eyes narrowed as he watched the figure emerge victorious from his battle against the squadron of dragons. A massive shroud of destruction was birthed from their body as they released all the kinetic energy they had built up. Roland wasn’t exactly sure what kind of Reflex Skill that was, but he knew it was Heroic-Tier at the least, and that this Pathbearer wasn’t friendly to Sullain.

They were fighting the Vicar’s patrols, tearing across the land and air like a fast-moving mana bomb. It was like they were deliberately trying to draw attention, deliberately trying to provoke notice.

They’re a distraction, Roland realized. I knew they couldn’t be operating alone. It wouldn’t make sense. Singleton Pathbearers are usually Shadows or Assassins. This one seems like a Heroic-Tier Vanguard…

The Pathbearer vanished from the sky just then. Roland thought they used their Chronomancy again, but the Town-Lord noticed a pulse of spatial magic about four kilometers away. He sent one of his arrows on approach. Whoever this stranger was, he wanted a better look at them. If this was another one of the Inquisition’s special operatives, he wanted to know—

Then, as the unknown Pathbearer launched himself across the land with a pulse of force, their helmet broke apart. A skull-shaped helmet. Their armor was made from metallic plates of interlocking bone. And their face—

Roland recognized their face in an instant.

His heart stopped. His stomach rebelled. His nightmares greeted him. For a moment, he thought he was looking at Harlon—but he corrected himself. Harlon was dead. This was his son. This was the Omenborn birthed from the ritual that killed Rose, that took from Roland his daughter.

This was Tanner Lowe. The boy who called himself Shiv. The one Roland hoped would remain Pathless until the end of his days.

He looked different. His irises were a brilliant white now, and he was practically twice as large as he used to be. He had skills now. Skills meant a Path. And that meant the reports—his Biomancers claimed to have recovered multiple bodies that belonged to Shiv, but Roland didn’t have the time to confirm. The battle—he had to constantly—

Nononono! Roland’s heart fell into a cold abyss. This couldn’t be happening. He refused to let this happen.

Shiv was accelerating toward the Tidewall in armor that invoked the image of death—the vestiges of death. That meant—that could only mean one thing—

Necrotech… Could he have been in league with the Necrotechs all this time? Another Abyssal Lord trying to undercut Vicar Sullain?

Roland shook his head. He couldn’t allow this. He wouldn’t accept this. He gritted his teeth and faced his nightmare, faced the boy who should have never gained a Path. 

The Starhawk’s light spilled out from Roland as his eyes began to glow. He had been a fool. Too soft. Too weak. Too—he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t just murder a child. And now he was paying for his mercy. Now, the Omenborn was on his way home.

“No!” Roland growled.

“Lord Arrow?” his personal Psychomancer said, taken aback by the sudden spike of terror she sensed in the Town Lord.

Roland was his arrows. But they also contained the power of the Starhawk. The power of a dying star’s last glow. And in a fit of dread and fury, Roland directed 244 of those arrows down to Old Santabar. To sear the land to glass. To unmake the Omenborn through tides of purifying flame.

And so they fell. Like shooting stars. They fell and zoomed from the upper atmosphere to the earth in less than a split second. He felt them hit Shiv. He felt the Omenborn’s body break, burn, but endure with the first ten arrows. Roland’s eyes widened. The Omenborn’s body was getting harder…

Adamantine Adaption?

Then the rest of the arrows crashed into him, and they all exploded at the same time.

Half of Old Santabar vanished beneath a pillar of solar-infused flame. Roland fell to his knees, more emotionally shaken than magically exhausted. As his personal guard and aides helped him back up, he wasn’t focused on them. Rather, he stared down from the other arrows he left in the void, and watched. Watched and made sure there was nothing left of the Omenborn. Watched. 

And kept watching…

He has to be dead… He has to be… He has to be…